Design and engineering software giant Autodesk will expand its San Francisco office footprint as the demand for 3-D modeling and printing continues to rise.

The company will open a 27,000-square-foot office space on Pier 9, just off the Embarcadero near the new Exploratorium, that will become home to, among other things, the advanced robotics workshop and labs that research nanotechnologies and synthetic biology.

Autodesk's headquarters is still in San Rafael, but it has tripled its San Francisco workforce in five years. Once the Pier 9 site and 108,000-square-foot space at One Market are completed and occupied, sometime in mid-2014, Autodesk says it will occupy more than 287,000 square feet in San Francisco.

The company develops a range of software, like AutoCad, for designing and modeling everything from skyscrapers to video game graphics. But one of the most intriguing applications for its software is 3-D printing.

'Printing' process

The process of "printing" an object can take a few forms. One of the most common is "additive printing," creating an object by repeatedly adding substrata of aluminum or plastic atop each other to create the object. Other processes employ lasers to carve an object from a solid block. Rather than printing ink onto a piece of paper, you print, say, a model airplane or a new car part.

The rise of the technology has led many to speculate on the future of both manufacturing and supply chains. Why rely on a distant factory or a shipping company to deliver a new set of knives, the logic goes, when you could just print them yourself? To date, a hindrance to that reality has been quality. The 3-D-printed objects, as a whole, are nowhere close to the quality of factory-made counterparts.

A report from consultancy Deloitte at the start of 2012 advised caution when praising the technology: "Although 3D printers hold considerable promise, one must be wary of the hype surrounding the technology." It goes on to point out that economies of scale and difficulty printing complex objects, like circuitry, are holding back the technology."

Customizing items

Industrial manufacturers have used 3-D printing for a couple of decades in their production lines to test or replace parts. And this is largely the value people see in 3-D printing now: customization. The ability to create something you couldn't find anywhere else.

The technology has evolved to the point that it's accessible to the average consumer, not unlike the way mainframe computers eventually took form as home computers.

The accessibility (some are less than $500) has spawned a vibrant do-it-yourself community. One of the groups moving to Autodesk's new space is in charge of Instructables, an online forum for all kinds of DIY enthusiasts.

But applications for 3-D printing go a lot further than trinkets and home ware. There are already 3-D-printed prosthetic limbs and replacement bones and joints. In December, human tissue maker Organovo announced it would use Autodesk's 3-D printing software in its new "bioprinter," a machine designed to re-create human tissue.

Bradshaw doesn't think it will be too long before we could print a new hand.

"I don't think its next year, but I don't think it's as long as 10 years," he said.